Terabitz Blog

What do you stand for?

To my amazing boys, you are my reason to keep going; Any imprint on the world I make I make for you. I want you to grow up in a family of honor that stands for something important. – Cesar Milan, Cesar’s Way

In an earlier incarnation, soon after I graduated, I was a young and eager executive at Oracle viewing life through a much different lens than I do now. While I did not know it at the time, that lens was cloudy, fogged up by youthful exuberance born out of pure textbook education and the rush of applying it inside fast lane of corporate America.

As far as rat races go, Silicon Valley is the Indy 500. And there I was, one was of many, trying to lead the pack inside a huge company where every other over achieving, drafting, Ivy League hot shot could, at any given moment, swing out from behind and out do me. All they had to do was work one hour longer, take one less break, and devote one more weekend to a project.

I didn’t think about it then, but few of those folks would ever really make it to the end of the race a winner.  The reason, as I would soon come to learn, is that most never really had the proper set of directions. Or discipline. They had an idea where they wanted to end up - rich and famous for some technological innovation - but few every really understood how to navigate the inside course to reach it.

I might not have either had the man I reported didn’t pass on a few words of wisdom that I remember to this day. In short, he suggested that if I truly wanted to define my life and achieve everything I was capable of, I needed to answer one simple question: What do I stand for. Once I determined that, he said, all I needed was to make sure everything that followed paid homage to it.

Right now this might be a great time for anyone reading this to ask that same question of themselves and their business.  

The essence of a brand

You do not have to be a dog lover to appreciate Cesar Milan or the success he has created for himself and others around him. What is important to understand however, is how he was able come to this country minus most of the tools we are lucky to inherit as citizens and within ten years achieve the very things most of my colleagues at Oracle spent a lifetime aspiring towards but never reaching.

Cesar stood for something. That something guided each and every decision he made. From who he married, to where he lived and to whom he allowed into his life.

The world is filled with examples of people who find within them a core belief that define their being. Some of them go on to build businesses that evoke and stir that same emotion within their clientele.

Madison Avenue distills that core essence down to one word – principles. It is from those core principles that brands are born, live and thrive.

I went back to my office after speaking with my boss and thought about what I stand for. I came up with two simple tenets that have defined my life. One was personal and one was career oriented. Personally, I stood for family first. And I meant it. I never waivered.  Career wise, I stood for creating solutions that better organized and simplified the life and business of my clients. I meant that too. And never waivered.

As a result of my dedication to these principles, the people I served achieved the goals they stood for as well.

The essence of real estate

Deep down, stripped away from all the goop that is our business, the commissions, the leads, the politics of search, and housed under the mire of fierce competition and the down market, are solid gold entities – brokerages and agencies that face far less adversity than any immigrant from south of the border who if pressed, probably couldn’t read a yard sign back then to save his life. Or for that matter the son of an Indian immigrant, fresh out of Stanford, trying to find his way in life.

Every broker I know stands for something. But until you compose it on paper, flush it out and fully examine if what you’ve built is aligned with your principles, then your brand will never shine bright. It will spin inside a centrifuge, caught in the rat race that is real estate and pit you against every other high achiever. On any given day, any broker can work a little harder, recruit the other brokers agents or throw a few more dollars at their marketing and out do the other.

But that’s not going to build a brand.

Align yourself and your company with your principles - the very core of what you stand for - remain steadfast and the essence of your brands will begin to glow. And you could become untouchable.

I’ve been fortunate to watch this happen in other industries. I know it can happen here.

- Ash.

Rethink your real estate space. Office Case study: Intero Andare

Tough times call for critical thinking.

Real estate broker – if you are dedicated to the brick-and-mortar brokerage office, but seek to change it up either to reduce cost or create an environment that infuses a spirit of change for customers and agents, you are not alone.

 Brokerage office case study: Intero Andare

Silicon Valley California: In the popular, high-end retail / residential development known as Santana Row, you'll find Intero's flagship Andare office. This 3,000-square-foot space is a minimalist hub of modern style and consumer traffic. Gone are the catacomb of cubicles, replaced by communal areas with rich leather sofas and chairs, cafe tables and a large central work console equipped with a power and data conduit from the ceiling.

The front receptionist's desk has been replaced with a retail-display-quality glass window, where Intero features resort properties and high-end homes from development partners broadcast on high-definition flat-screen TVs.

For developers, this serves as a localized space where they can create awareness of upcoming projects.

For agents, this modern space sparks a discernible energy that turns it from vanilla office into a hub of positive activity. Now it’s a convenient place to meet clients who are out shopping in the area already, check email and go over contracts (which are conveniently and securely stored online).

Agents plug into Web-based transaction management software enabling them to manage entire client files online, eliminating the need for paper and storage -- hence the absence of copy machines, printers and the lasso of leases that hogtie their P&L.

For consumers, the Andare office emits an air of difference offering a beckoning invitation to come in and see what's on the market while enjoying a cup of coffee, high-speed Wi-Fi, or meet with their agent to sign a contract. All without the threatening scent of sales.

For Intero brokers, all this traffic, interest and excitement came with a price. A reduced price. 70 percent less to be precise compared to Intero's larger 7,000 – 11,000-square-foot offices, which have been part of the Bay Area landscape and part of the company’s brand identity. Andare was more than an experiment. It was a bold move during a year when most of their local competition buckled down, stopped spending and cut, cut, cut everything without replacing with anything new, different or better.

It was a move that sent a loud and clear message to their agents that evoked the type of leadership that makes them want to participate and do what they can to support.

It was a move that sent a renewed message to the public that real estate is not mom and pop, backward and dated but instead, concerned about enhancing the experience of anyone with even a remote interest in houses. 

Still convinced your old brokerage office is getting the job done?

Part 1 of this article, Fashion Trends for real estate challenged the notion of office space for brokers, agents and consumers. In it I suggested replacing the terrestrial office altogether for a virtual one as the most cost-effective and absolutely doable approach in today's networked world. But for those brokers who are still convinced they need office and seeking alternatives, Intero Andare stands as a beacon.

While I herald the merits the virtual world offers brokers, office space can make sense today and find itself home on Main Street creating brand awareness and brand experience for the consumer and a magnet for career minded agents searching for a progressive place to work.

And as I have learned from Intero, all of this can be acquired for price that is too good to pass up.

If you’ve ever dreamed of cutting cost and removing that large retail monkey from your back but never thought it possible to fit your organization inside a few thousand square feet, think again. 

Lose the cubicles. Lose reception. Go completely wireless. Invite the public to use your machines and access your information. Give the agents couches to work on, coffee to sip and place this in the center of town. Then sit back and watch what happens.

Andare is an idea come to life. An experiment with a remarkable yield. For Intero, just the beginning.

Ash

 

Fashion trends for brick and mortar

To say that real estate is in a state of deep reinvention is like saying the market is bad. We all know it. We're all looking for ways to start over and build anew.

Yet, when I suggested in a previous guest article (see "Brokers, change your ways [2]") the notion that brokers should rethink their real estate office space and get rid of it to cut costs, many protested.

Some said we need space to show that we operate a professional business.

I say, if you're looking at space as a sign of professionalism to your consumers it's really time to rethink what the word "professional" means, and how that might be illustrated today -- especially within the context of what a real estate office is and should be going forward.

Space, a final frontier

If you believe in a consumer-centric business model rather than or in conjunction with an agent-centric model, then the question remains: Do consumers need four walls in order to be convinced that a brokerage is a legitimate operation, and do agents need space or order to feel professional?

We learned from the exhaustive surveys performed by both the National Association of Realtors and California Association of Realtors that consumers judge agents based on whether they meet their service needs or not, rather than where agents spend their day. This much is crystal clear as indicated by survey respondents' expectations for quick responses from agents.

Possessing a cubicle, on the other hand, rarely if ever shows up as an indicator of professionalism or a customer need.

So where does space enhance the experience for both parties? We know that a cool, clean, unencumbered space -- conveniently located and designed to optimize your services, extend your brand position and build a culture -- is critical to any organization.

But the old model -- that catacomb-of-cubicles-that-barely-sees-human-life space; the maze-of-PCs-printers-phones-and-fax-machines space; the back-office-conference-room space; the uninviting-waiting-area-toward-the-front-door-with-a-couple-of-chairs-for-visitors space -- is for the most part expensive, useless and enhances little for your agents and the consumer.

Turning space into a great place

Let's look at how a consumer-centric broker might approach space for their real estate office today. For that preview, I offer you a look at one of the world's brand geniuses: Apple Computer.

Apple did not start out with retail stores in every major city, but it has them now. Why? Because its executive team thought about what a consumer would need in a retail space. More than just a cash register where you purchase your Mac, iPhone or iPod and then leave until next time, Apple stores indeed have become consumer-centric hangouts.

From the Genius Bar, where you can take your laptop to be examined or get help with a particular problem, to the simple treat of being able to stop in and check e-mail on a glorious new machine, to the space dedicated to teaching users about new Mac applications -- these stores are packed daily.

Yes, real estate is to computers what apples are to oranges, but your customers are the very same people and I can’t imagine them not being intrigued by real estate providing a very similar type of experience.

By building consumer-centric stores, Apple took whatever brand experience they had to levels unheralded in retail. I believe this model translates well for real estate brokers who constantly struggle for meaning in their brands, loyalty among consumers, and their agents as well.

Transformation

If you're looking to cut costs, think about the possibilities. Either keep the large museums filled with old machines and empty spaces that draw little interest and hardly leverage the treasure inside, or build and occupy sleek destinations that offer insight, hands-on touch, a "genius bar" of local agents who waft interest into the street.

Bricks and mortar for real estate need not be cold and boring. Dismantle the cubicles. Install a free wireless network and a corner of computers where people can come in and surf the Web for new real estate listings. Add couches where consumers can feel relaxed while discussing the type of home, neighborhood and future they want to build for their families. Turn your place into a living room rather than the clinic so many offices look like today.

Brokers, change your ways

Quit what doesn't work and start reinventing things that do.

Seth Godin covers this practice extensively in his book, "The Dip," and nowhere can it be more appropriately applied than to today's brokerage model, which is running full steam on yesterday's expense engine. Brokers are struggling to stay on top of their business, as the cost of maintaining failing operations add insult to the injury of the declining economy and stagnant housing market. Many brokers are in need of a new direction to help them through the remainder of this housing recession.

To do this, they need to let go of old habits, processes and the apron strings of traditional models that continue to cut into revenue and that no longer make sense. Here are the six things brokers need to let go of today:

People. Reducing headcount is the most difficult thing for us all to do but is also the most logical place to start. It's heart-wrenching and personal and it never gets easy. Unfortunately, however, it needs to be done and the sooner the better. Begin with the folks and/or departments that are not performing. Trust that their lack of production is not only affecting the firm, it's affecting others inside the firm that are producing. When you take this sort of action, the signals you send across all channels will, in fact, energize the entire organization. Next, remove those parts of the organization that are not necessary to your core business. If it isn't core, you might very well be able to reduce its cost by outsourcing. This is particularly true of administration, internal support, information technology, accounting and other such groups. Become better organized and leverage technology and you won't miss the "luxuries" of support staff to which you have grown accustomed. Start now.

Expensive Applications. Another by-product of the boom are clunky brokerage applications that can be easily swapped for freeware that works as well if not better than what your vendor custom-built for you years ago. From mail servers to comparative market analysis (CMA) tools and lead management, alternatives are now available that did not exist a year ago that are sleek, easily programmed and simple-to-use and can replace a host of aging functionality. Brokers, think of replacing your e-mail system with Google or Yahoo mail. Think of replacing your contact management system and calendaring with ones available for FREE. When you have a system that you get only 3 percent use out of, is this worth the cost?

Web sites. Is your Web site designed to be consumer friendly? Does it offer the tools and information that a CONSUMER requires? If not, throw away that old Web site and replace it with a new one that does. Your site should attract and engage customers while allowing you to capture business. Remember that your office on Main Street has been replaced with the one on the Web.

Advertising. I know some sellers still expect print ads to advertise their homes, as do agents. But how much longer can brokers continue to feed these fantasies? And so what if you've advertised on search engines for the last five years. Are these efforts returning value that pencils out at the end of the day? Too much of brokers' money is being wasted on the wrong ad buys and destinations that no longer provide the best visibility and return on investment. And even more money is wasted on the ads themselves, replete with bad copy and missing the key triggers that will incite a quality call-to-action. Brokers, start tracking your Web ads. Measure every penny spent. Scrutinize the ad copy. And quit everything that no longer works.

Desk fees. Granted, this is how some brokers make money and yet even the term seems so antiquated as the need for a desk -- let alone many of the things that come with it -- are of no use to agents today. Analyze the tools you are supplying your agents and how often they are used (if at all), then compare that to what you could be offering them that applies to today's business. You may find that many of your agents are already paying outside vendors for things you could be providing, such as Web sites, blogs and listing syndication, among tools and services. Study your own agents, find out what they need to operate efficiently, and match these needs to the most basic functionality they crave. You will find that in many cases you are overpaying for technology that is not even being used.

Physical space. Today, it is possible to run an entire company virtually. Agents don't need office space. Accounting departments don't need office space. IT people don't need office space. In fact, brokers don't necessarily even need in-house accounting or IT staff since all of these services and more can be outsourced. Between task-flow software, cloud computing, digital paper and e-signature, and working from home, most medium-sized companies can go completely virtual and most very large firms can scale down immensely. Seek out a $500 lease on office space for meetings, and relegate your agents to work from Starbucks and the host of public destinations where free Wi-Fi exists. Let's face it: As walk-in traffic has waned, agents need to be as public and available as they can.

We are in an incredible time of transition in the real estate industry. Brokers are continuously rethinking costs, investments and processes, and considering options to cut costs and improve efficiency.

Five Ways Brokers Can Save Thousands of Dollars

While the country is in a financial tailspin, the housing market is already bruised from taking punches over the last two years. Plenty of brokers have already folded, crumbled by failure to downsize and cost cut. Today’s times call for lean budgets, when all brokers – no matter the size – should be reviewing their operational waste and sharpening their ax.

We previously discussed in this blog how brokers waste tons of cash on unnecessary IT departments with elaborate systems such as exchange servers along with their salaries that could be easily replaced with free online systems like Google and call-in help desks.

So what else can you do beyond choking the IT department?

Operationally, there’s plenty. As I visit one brokerage facility after another all I see is waste. To you they may look like expensive copy machines and phone lines, and store rooms filled with file cabinets and stationary. But in today’s times, I see them as unnecessary leases, useless square footage and easily replaceable services.

Below are five things brokers should consider as a way to save money and radically shift your processes to meet the future head on.

1. Ax your administrative transaction help.  Tons of brokers employ what are known as expeditors, people paid to follow up on details of their agents' deals. Given today's climate, there is no reason why agents cannot be persuaded to do these things themselves. For many of these follow-up items, an agent simply needs to set up a tickler on their calendar to remind them to make a 2-minute phone call or check that a document has come through with the required signatures.

Follow-up resource:  Some new tools available online to help expedite this are www.jott.com and www.rememberthemilk.com.

2. Ax your office personnel.  Let's be honest here. With most agents living a mobile lifestyle away from the office, and with most offices no longer entertaining walk-in traffic, why pay someone to answer phones and make copies? Between call forwarding and electronic processes, i.e., tablet computers and e-signature software, your agents should be handling both of these operations anyway, so why pay a salary to push paper around? Agents should be servicing leads that mostly come in via the Internet directly on their smart phones, not via a desk phone answered by someone who takes a message on a Post-It note – services and supplies you pay for.

Follow-up resource:  Consider sources such as www.liveperson.com to connect your Web site to your phone.

3. Rethink your Internet lead management group.  What I'm hearing is that many brokers employ a team of people whose job is to follow up on the lead forms that come in through the brokerage Web site. With today's housing markets as slow as they are, I see no reason agents can't find the time to do this themselves.

Follow-up resource:  Consider sources such as http://www.Realping.com to get consumers connected with your agent immediately or considering using live chat on your site to route interested parties directly with agents who are online. Look into http://www.meebo.com or www.plugoo.com

4. Outsource your finance department.  Again, if the volume of transactions is down as statistics show, you don't need a team of people in-house people to manage finances. Shrink it down to one person if you feel you still need someone and outsource the rest to a service that handles this more effectively and more cost efficiently than a full-time employee. Or outsource the entire process.


Follow-up resource:  Look into services such as http://www.accountantsoffsite.com or www.QuickBooksOnline.com.

5. Downsize or eliminate your physical real estate.  Your agents aren’t employees. Unless your revenue model is based on desk fees, why do you feel obligated to supply individual works spaces to agents that are hardly ever there? I’ve seen the occupancy rate at broker facilities and they are, for the most part, never more than 30% full. The bulk of your agents' work takes place outside the office. So why pay premium retail prices to maintain oversized bricks and mortar? Plenty of innovative and intelligent brokers have proven that a virtual office can work very well in this industry. In fact, there are examples of brokers who vacate large buildings they own, lease them out and relocate into smaller, more affordable spaces.

An aggressive combination of all of these strategies could save you tens of thousands of dollars each month, depending on your brokerage size. Just switching from your mail server to Google mail (for brokerages who require 200 mail addresses and under) can go from whatever you currently pay to $0.00 per month.

Times are lean. Brokers need to get mean if you want to survive.

Brokers: Obsess on ROI

ROI is something we all talk about in business. It's the tell-tale signal that your efforts are either working or they're not. While it sounds easy enough – test, measure, tweak your campaigns – the problem in real estate is that most brokers aren't doing it. Many don’t even know where to start.

Brokers: It's time to seriously ask yourselves, do you really know your return on investment for each and every dollar you spend on technology, lead generation and conversion? In a time when business is scarce, you can no longer ignore this key component. In fact, you should rely on these measurements now more than ever.

Three things to consider today:

You've paid someone to build your Web site, but is your site capturing any leads? Is it delivering any value to you at the end of the day? Are you closing business directly due to your Web site's efforts? How can you know for sure?

Are you paying to publish your listings or send feeds to other Web sites? If so, do you know exactly what you are paying, whether this exposure is converting to closed business and what the price per closed transaction is?

Are all your eggs in one basket? If you're still using print, you probably see this as a big expense. Do you know whether this cost is returning anything to you? If you pulled all your advertising at once, would it make a difference to the amount of business you have coming in? Try it.

Your business depends on you mastering calculations like this. It is important to analyze the source of every lead that comes your way, and it's also not that difficult. Here's how to start:

Go to your Web site provider and get a full report on where all your traffic is coming from. You have to see for yourself whether it's worth it to continue paying third-party publishers and nothing speaks louder than cold, hard facts.

Upload listings feeds to a variety of sites in order to diversify your potential sources of consumer leads. Analyze each feed individually and in relation to all feeds, then rank them according to which are sending you traffic and which are not. Pull your feeds from any place that does not generate traffic or pales in comparison to your top destinations.

A radical, yet highly effective approach to analyzing ROI is to pull all ads and feeds from every place for two months. This will open your eyes to what is working and what is not.

If no one in your office can produce a simple spreadsheet that shows a direct line of where every closed transaction came from, then you aren't properly tracking your ROI.

And if you’re not tracking ROI, well, you can be certain you’re wasting money.

Why you should fire your IT department

Most real estate brokerages didn't have IT departments before the '90s. Then the age of computers and Web sites came. Now every office in the country has a costly department that keeps Web sites running, listing feeds live and mail servers breathing.

The reality is the smartest business decision a broker can make today is to cut loose their IT department. In the age of outsourcing, this is perhaps the easiest thing for brokers to let go while enjoying a significant cut to operating costs.

Coming from a person with a heavy technology background, you're probably wondering why I would advise dumping your tech employees. It's simple: IT departments just aren't needed to the degree that many brokers now have them. Brokerages are sales businesses, and should be run as such. Brokers really have no business operating huge mail servers, tethering agents – who aren't even employees – to their in-house legacies. They certainly have no business building customized technology platforms.

From an agent's perspective, it doesn't make sense to get wound into a broker's system, only to have to deal with prying out your contacts and mail when it's time to move on. After all, agents are independent contractors. Why should they be tethered to a broker's mail server like this? It's a waste of money.

Many small businesses today are following the mobile computing trend, setting up company email using the Google Gmail platform, utilizing online document storage and other Web-based applications from Google Amazon and others. There's no reason brokerages can't do this too.

The most underutilized person in a real estate office is the office manager. Brokers looking for ways to streamline costs and processes should pay close attention to their managers and how they spend their time. A good office manager could easily oversee the processes currently owned by IT staff.

It's time for brokers to return focus to running their office as a business, not a technology center. Most of younger agents coming into the business these days will be quite comfortable with this arrangement and you’ll restore some sensibility to your P&L.

Let's get back to the business of real estate, not the business of technology.

Who is the best incomplete national search site?

The recent TechCrunch post regarding listing accuracy of  online real estate sites generated some interesting chatter, some which were quite salient and spot on:  namely that substantial lack of coverage by the national sites such as Trulia and Zillow. I don’t believe this was shocking news to anyone and certainly no denying the fact.

Missing from the discussion, however, is the observation that all of these sites MAY play an entirely useful role in the search for a home.  Indeed, there is nothing wrong with a consumer starting her search at Zillow, et al. and eventually winding up with a local agent who ultimately helps her fulfill the dream of finding a home.  The point that the attacks on these sites fail to address is that in the end, all paths lead to Rome:  the Realtor and local Broker.  These are the people who ultimately provide the search, the experience and the local, nuanced knowledge to get the job done.  I know that, you know that, and millions of people who acquire the services of these professionals know that.

These various so-called national sites are just opening acts for the main event. And they always will be.

So, what should Realtors and Brokers do? 

• Don’t fret if you aren’t the first site consumer’s visit. Remember, people surf the web. They visit lots of sites. Just make sure yours clearly promotes the fact that you have ALL THE LISTINGS in your market.
• Make sure that your listings can be found easily on your site. Make Home Search the most prominent element on the homepage.
• Let users now how often your listings are updated. If its twice a day from MLS – promote it.
• Post many pictures. Not 6 or 8. Items on eBay often have more pics.
• Create blogs around your listings. Feed it with insight only you know about the home and the neighborhood. While the other sites pull MLS data, they can’t take that core intelligence you have locked away in your brain. Use what you know to differentiate and make your site more valuable.

Remember, these national site and fun to use but they do not specialize in hyper local anything. You do. Harp on that. Promote around that. Build a web presence that promotes you and your brand and a search experience that provides the largest number of listings in your local area.  Not to mention great, prompt customer service.

Let Zillow, Trulia and the others argue for who is the best incomplete national site.

The MLS mess and how to dig out of it

Roughly 900 MLSs serve real estate markets across the United States and nearly all of them are in danger of becoming extinct. It’s time for MLSs to realize there is a new master in town – the consumer – and they will need to shift their thinking to how to serve this segment to stay alive.

The MLS mess is evident on many levels. Inconsistent methods for measuring and communicating basic property data continue to plague the systems. The same parcel can be measured in square feet within one MLS and as acreage in another. One MLS will record a partial bathroom as one-tenth, and another simply says partial bath. Some markets still struggle with the hard grip on information like those in which MLSs will not allow property addresses to be displayed.

This mess causes unbelievable problems for technology systems, brokers who are trying to serve areas that fall into more than one MLS’ turf, and consumers who just want to be able to compare homes in their searches.

It’s true that MLSs were not built as consumer utilities, but the reality is that the world has changed drastically since most opened their doors many decades ago. Because most MLSs do not feel the need to serve consumers, an unmet need already has been seized by online companies offering easy access to information.

Here are three things that brokers, agents and MLSs should do now to shift their place in the new world and secure value propositions that are consistent with the needs of the marketplace:

1. Make data transparent and consistent. Real estate data needs to be readily available to everyone in order to conform to today’s standards and the way in which consumers expect to interact with the industry. And this data needs to be consistent. A partial bathroom must be defined and consistent from MLS to MLS – at least among geographically neighboring MLSs.

2. Accept their new roles. We all understand that MLSs initially were not built as databases to be seen and utilized by consumers, but it’s time to grow past this and catch up with the modern world. MLSs and agents alike need to get beyond the notion that they are guardians of some secret treasure. Information is ubiquitous in a Web-enabled world.

3. Become consumer-centric. Once everyone accepts that they have a new role with consumers beyond information gatekeeper, each can focus on building an incredible set of services around the data that is now everywhere. MLSs can focus on providing technology or governance services to members. Agents can focus on helping consumers interpret all this data and process it in a way that helps them meet their housing goals.

Releasing data is the best thing that could ever happen to the real estate industry. When consumers reach a point where they have so much information to the point of being overwhelmed, suddenly, the agent is even more necessary to the process. Consumers need the expertise of an agent to help guide them through all this information and match it to their lifestyles in a way that makes sense.

Real estate search has no meaning

Today, all online real estate searches start with a 30,000-foot view of the earth, then pull you into states and cities. If you’re lucky, you get neighborhoods that you can understand in the terms that you have in mind. After this, you must draw parameters around your preference for number of bedrooms, bathrooms and square footage.

But when is the last time that a buyer stepped into a real estate agent’s car and laid out their desires like this? When seeking our next home, we tend to think more about our lifestyle. We want to be able to walk our kids to elementary school and not have to go more than five blocks to get basic grocery items, as an example. A park would be nice.

This is the way we think about buying our next home. This is the way we think about where we want to live. Yet, no MLS systems or real estate search sites capture information this way, let alone enable agents and consumers to search in this manner. Agents include descriptions next to listings, but people rarely pay attention to those due to the twisted meaning of phrases like “cozy and comfortable,” which means small and cramped, or “urban and hip,” which often means crime-ridden and grungy.

What’s missing from real estate is a system that helps push matches to consumers based on their lifestyle choices, their demographic. These systems exist within other verticals. Just look at Amazon, where you can search for a book and be led down a path that offers other books you may be interested in based on what other people who looked at this book also looked at or purchased.

Everyone in real estate has the same product with no different ways of presenting it.

One way to solve this problem is to build systems that capture this information, systems that capture and quantify what defines a livable neighborhood based on buyers’ real preferences. This system needs to capture what the buyer tells an agent when they first meet. “We want a nice, quiet neighborhood where people are friendly and kids have a place to play together. We want a house that fits our family of four, with room for grandma when she visits.” This, rather than “2,000-square-foot rancher with four bedrooms on a quiet street.” See the difference?

It is critical that real estate search systems begin to capture information about what is just down the street or three blocks away, what a school that’s rated a “four” really means, what a buyer is really looking for when considering their next move.

Maybe it’s a wiki that captures this lifestyle information. Maybe it’s agents taking note and quantifying the livable aspects of neighborhoods. Or maybe it’s deeper integration of various data into real estate search. Whatever the technological answer, it needs to infuse meaning into real estate search. If Amazon can do this for books, it can be done for homes and lifestyle.